Timothy Douglas photo by Kimberly Aileen Scott

Timothy Douglas officially took the reigns July 1, 2011 as Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s new artistic director. Mr. Douglas, age 49, has built a career as a stage director, actor and educator, proving his versatility as both an acclaimed interpreter of the classics and contemporary drama. Mr. Douglas counts among his credits the world premiere of August Wilson’s Radio Golf for Yale Rep, his critically acclaimed Caribbean-inspired Much Ado About Nothing for the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, and the premiere of a new translation/adaptation of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm off-Broadway. He worked in the Chicago area from 1989 – 1991, before going on to serve as a resident director at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles from 1994 – 1997, and associate artistic director at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville from 2001 – 2004. He has been a company member with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass. since 1986.  With this appointment Douglas becomes first African American Artistic Director in Chicago to helm an Equity theater dedicated to modern classics.

His first creative project with the company was a July 3rd concert reading of the Declaration of Independence in collaboration with the Grant Park Music Festival.  See event photos on the Remy Bumppo website. Over 100 Chicago theater and cultural leaders participated in the reading including Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell me,” Golden Globe-winning Actress Regina Taylor, Goodman Theatre Associate Artistic Director Henry Godinez, Court Theatre Associate Artistic Director Ron OJ Parsons, Lookingglass Theatre Artistic Director Andrew White, Chicago Public Radio’s “848” Dueling Critic Kelly Kleiman, Victory Gardens Theater Executive Director Jan Kallish, and Christopher Piatt host of “The Paper Machete Show.”

Read Timothy’s appointment announcement in the Chicago Tribune,  Chicago Sun-Times and in PerformInk.  Hear a podcast interview with Timothy Theater in Chicago.

Fugard Chicago 2010 sample ad

I’ve been meaning to post on this project for a while.  It’s one of my highlights of 2010.  Exercising the creativity that brought us into the field of arts marketing, and demonstrating the collaborative work style required of all practitioners of theater, three Chicago theater marketing directors (Adam Thurman of Court Theatre, Lara Goetsch of TimeLine Theatre Company and myself – then at Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, came together in summer of 2009 to discuss a remarkable coincidence.  All three companies had just announced they would be presenting plays by not-so-often produced playwright Athol Fugard in the spring of 2010.  Spurred on by shrinking budgets due to the economic downturn – we brainstormed ideas for combining our resources and strengths to raise awareness of the playwright and ensure strong ticket sales for the plays.

Out of that first conversation over coffee, came the idea of a collaborative website: FugardChicago2010.  The purposes of the site: to elevate the playwright by highlighting his contribution to the world stage, and to provide a portal to each company’s website for single ticket sales.  The site would reward visitors who joined the FugardChicago2010 e-mail list with a discount code that could be redeemed at the box offices. The site would also sell 3-play subscriptions.

We quickly realized that through coordinated efforts, we could greatly expand our exposure and encourage audience crossover without increasing our marketing budgets.  So we did a few key things:

1) we established the level of current audience crossover between our mail lists

2) we agreed to share a dramaturg (the fabulous Kelli Marino), who would write the website copy and a series of articles on Fugard and the plays to be shared with all three patron bases.

3) we collaborated on PR efforts

4) we allocated a portion of our ad budgets to promote the website

5) we created a free public event to further promote the collaboration

Results:

One of the biggest immediate payoffs was the press coverage.  By banding together we made the “top 10 shows to see” lists of several local news outlets.  We scored a front page Sunday arts section feature in the Chicago Sun-Times.  And benefited from  having each theater’s productions tagged in most of the preview stories and reviews secured by the project partners.

The partnership gave us a heft and credibility we didn’t have individually, demonstrated by our being invited by MCA Stage to present a public panel discussion called “Writing for Change” as an homage to Fugard, which featured an exhilarating lineup of hot young playwrights including Tarell Alvin McCraney (The Brother/Sister Plays; Wig Out!), Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity; Welcome to Arroyos), Young Jean Lee (The Shipment; CHURCH; Pullman, WA) and Tanya Saracho (Generic Latina; S-E-X-Oh!; and adaptor of The House on Mango Street for Steppenwolf Theatre).  Big thanks to Susan Padveen of Columbia College Chicago for conceiving of and assembling the panel.

Another huge benefit, was that by coordinating our eCommunications efforts, and providing each other with photos, video clips, notice of special events and the shared dramaturgical articles – we were able to essentially triple our audience exposure with every e-mail we dispatched.

An unforseen perk of the collaboration was that our meetings provided a chance to exchange info with each other on best practices, benchmark our sales, and talk about strategies and tactics we were experimenting with.

When we met recently to recap the project – we agreed one of the great successes was the way we split up responsibilities for the planning and implementation of the project.  At the start we volunteered to handle different aspects of the project, based on our strengths – which was key to it being such a positive experience.  No one felt overworked, and everyone felt ownership.  It was a great model for collaboration.

We are currently pulling together final data to determine post-project audience crossover results.  But I think I can speak for my cohorts when I say, this collaboration was an unqualified success.

Stay tuned for future Chicago theater cooperative marketing efforts.  We were delighted to have been sponsored in this endeavor by the League of Chicago Theaters, who now owns the collaborative website template.  Contact the League if you are interested in setting up a partnership like FugardChicago2010.